Claxton Opera

History

Interior of Chapel early 1900s - from a postcard

Part One - The Meeting House

The first Baptist chapel in Claxton (Strict and
Particular) was founded largely by the efforts of Mr Henry Utting,
the first pastor who bore most of the principal expense himself.

The original deeds of the Meeting House,
destroyed in the disastrous fire of 1993, showed that the present
building was erected between 1750 and 1755. The deeds were witnessed
by five members of the congregation, four of whom could not even
write and marked it only with an X. Such chapels or meeting houses
were often built slightly out of the village on land which could be
purchased more cheaply. The land was let at first by a local farmer
at a peppercorn rent and only granted as freehold in 1779.

The expert opinion, when the building was
assessed for listing in the late 1960s, indicated that the lean-to
on the west side of the building was part of an earlier chapel or
meeting house. It is possible that the main building itself was
altered in the early nineteenth century. Certainly the bricks of the
lean-to are significantly older than those of the main building and
the upper courses of the latter indicate further alteration. The
money for the Meeting House was provided largely by the Countess of
Huntingdon, a legendary figure and one of several aristocratic women
who were prominent in the history of the Baptist Movement. She
became the focus of a considerable congregation of members who
sought a reformed and more extreme form of worship and lifestyle.
Her following became known as the Countess of Huntingdon's sect.

Claxton could boast one of the biggest Strict
Baptist churches in the district. Some of its earliest members
walked more than 12 miles from the Beccles area to attend services.
The Meeting House in its original form certainly reflected the
sect's aims. While embodying the ideals of Georgian architecture it
remained very austere and plain. Such decorations as there were
resulted more from function than from vanity or mere show. Even the
door-jambs and doors were re-used from an earlier building. Some
examples still exist in the present structure.The panelling of the
gallery that ran round three sides of the building and the pulpit
were constructed in pine using the plainest possible design. A
twenty foot section of this is also still intact.

Standing 45ft square and 18ft high the chapel
accommodated five hundred in its heyday, which is remarkable given
that current safety requirements permit an audience of just 104 at
the annual opera nights. The doors at the front kept the sexes
strictly segregated. Bodily ornament was condemned. Women kept their
eyes lowered. Sunday morning service lasted three hours. A great
clock faced the pulpit and sermons often lasted over an hour. Many
picnicked in the summer and took refreshment at long tables in the
winter, before a further two hour service in the afternoon.

The most famous minister, Job Hupton began his
ministry in September 1794. He was a fire and brimstone preacher and
wrote spirit lifting hymns, such as Come ye faithful, raise the
Anthem. When he died in October 1849 at the end of a long
ministry, he was buried in the Meeting House graveyard alongside two
of his wives. He was succeeded by Mr David Pegg who was pastor for
20 years and then by Mr Henry Pawson.

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth
century the Meeting House flourished, as the burials indicate in the
adjacent graveyard. However the first blow came with the huge
expansion of Methodism, and when the Oxford Movement rejuvenated the
Church of England it further squeezed the more extreme religious
sects. The most devastating blow was the emancipation of working
people brought about by the social dislocation of the First World
War. The ordered world of deference, privilege and authority was
crumbling and people were looking elsewhere for meaning in their
lives.

The Meeting House 1971

The Meeting House closed for worship in 1943 and
was sold to local farmer Mr Leslie Catchpole who used it as a
tractor shed and grain store and burned the pews on his fire! The
burial ground disappeared beneath a jungle of brambles, elder and
rosebay willowherb and the chapel fell slowly into ruin.

In 1973 musician and teacher Richard White,
returning to the Norfolk of his childhood, with his wife Roberta
bought the chapel and the keeper's cottage. The family lived in the
cottage, made the chapel weatherproof and enjoyed the grand space.

In 1983 the cottage was sold to David and Lesley
Hamlyn and Richard converted the chapel into a spacious house. Ten
years later the building was gutted by fire, only the four walls
remaining. The Old Meeting House was rebuilt and after 18 months the
family moved back into their home. A new chapter began with the
fulfilment of Richard's long cherished dreams: operas at Claxton.
Since then Claxton Opera has presented one opera each year. The
living room becomes a theatre for two or three months, complete with
lighting rig, orchestra pit for thirty players and a gallery.

The chapel lives on resounding to a rather
different sort of music from that heard in the heyday of the Strict
and Particulars.